


Fog

by flaming_muse



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Atmospheric, First Kiss, M/M, Weather, it's hard being derek hale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-10
Updated: 2013-03-10
Packaged: 2017-12-04 21:11:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/715141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flaming_muse/pseuds/flaming_muse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The fog is thick and dense, not so much drifting through the trees of the Preserve as sitting there, heavy, like a layer of silt settled at the bottom of a lake.</p>
<p>Or, the one where Derek goes for a walk.</p>
<p>set vaguely after season 2, no spoilers for season 3</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fog

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks go, as always, to my dear Stoney.

The fog is thick and dense, not so much drifting through the trees of the Preserve as sitting there, heavy, like a layer of silt settled at the bottom of a lake. It’s stifling and claustrophobic as Derek walks through it and breathes in the damp air, if something so laden with moisture can really be called air. It feels more like soup.

Some wild part of him is tempted to climb up a tree to get above the fog, to see the sky and fill his lungs with something clean, but instead he hunches his shoulders in his jacket and walks on.

It helps that he knows these woods as well as he did his childhood home. They were an extension of it, back when he was a kid, kind of an enormous natural playground right outside of his front door. He and his siblings were always spilling out into it, playing tag, going on secret missions, pretending to hunt squirrels and each other in elaborate games half from their imaginations as children and half from their instincts as pack.

They’re all gone now, but he remembers it all.

So he knows that the ground dips unexpectedly low beyond that fallen pine, and he can still see Laura in his mind’s eye standing high and proud on its trunk the day after the storm had knocked it down. He knows the gurgling of the stream, where he and his brothers used to try to catch fish with their bare hands but never did, means he needs to head south. He knows the thicket of briars by the bluff is thicker than it looks and a good place to lose someone or something giving chase. He knows the rocky scree at its base gives way underfoot even for a careful walker, and he skirts it with plenty of room to spare.

He knows all of the woods’ secrets. He knows exactly where he is.

Still, even though his steps don’t falter on his familiar route, Derek feels lost. He knows where he is, but it still isn’t right. The fog is muffling, and even with his excellent senses he can barely hear beyond the sounds of his footfalls. He can hardly see more than fifteen feet before the trees fade into the ghostly fog around them. It’s enough that he isn’t actually walking in circles, but he feels like he’s blind and deaf. He misses the sleepy scratching of woodland creatures in their tunnels or the whisper of an owl in flight that he categorizes without thought and the distant rumble of a car or the laughter of teenagers out in the woods; it’s only the rhythm of his own breath that catches in his ears tonight. Only the musty scent of damp leaf litter stirred by his feet fills his nose.

He feels vulnerable, and the awareness of how little warning he would have of an attack sits uneasily on his shoulders. There would be no telltale race of a heartbeat coming closer, no unexpected scent on the wind. He feels like a target, bumbling his way past knowing eyes. Not that any other werewolf wandering in the dense fog would be any better off than he is, but werewolves aren’t the only creatures who hunt in the night, and he doesn’t know what abilities they might possess that he does not. He can’t even imagine. It’s been a long time since his imagination has been able to be turned to something more specific than the simple, awful knowledge that the world contains dangers well beyond what he can anticipate. He doesn’t have the luxury to think more about them until the next one comes directly at him.

Like tonight, he never knows when that might be.

Derek’s feet finally reach the pavement of the road, and he stands there and breathes for a long moment. The night is so strange, and he’d probably feel less antsy inside his own space, yet instead of turning toward his crumbling house he heads the other direction.

The sound of the rough gravel against the asphalt is different from the rustling of the leaves, but it’s no less strangely loud in his ears. He stays well to the side of the road, because he doesn’t trust himself to notice a car in time. He’d like to the think the roar of its engine or beams of its headlights coming closer would cut through the thick grey world surrounding him, but he can’t be sure. The fog is like a cloak around him, like a wall, keeping the rest of the world out and himself alone inside.

Being alone is something he’s grown more than used to out of necessity, but part of how he can feel secure in this life he lives is because he knows how to guard for danger. He knows his strengths and weaknesses, and he knows how to handle himself.

Tonight, though, he feels as helpless as a baby. A car could appear right behind him. A mountain lion could bound out of the moonlit mist and go right for his throat. Anything could happen to him, entirely without warning, and he’d only be able to react at the last moment, not to prepare.

A car does pass him, its headlights enough of a warning, and his heart pounds as he quickly steps off into the shoulder to stay out of its way. The driver doesn’t slow, probably doesn’t even see him, just vanishes off into the night, gone nearly as quickly as it appeared. Usually Derek would be able to follow its progress with his ears if he chose. Not tonight. Tonight it’s just gone.

No, Derek realizes as he walks down familiar streets, he’s not like a baby; he’s like a human, a regular one. He can still move. He can still fight. He can still think and act. But he can’t meet threats the way he’s used to if he can’t sense them coming.

His shoulders tighten at that uncomfortable idea. It’s hard enough to keep his head above water - sometimes literally, he thinks with a sigh - the way things usually are. He’s glad the fog is only temporary.

As he turns into the neighborhood, a dog barks nearby, though how near Derek can’t tell. The sound is distorted and dampened. All he knows that there is a dog somewhere, one that wants attention but isn’t even aware of him. There are lights here and there now, too: wan, weak spots from porches and windows, barely visible as he passes each driveway.

Usually as he slips past human senses Derek feels strong and special. He feels different. He feels like a member of the family who made him instead of like everyone else.

Today he feels like a ghost with the fog his shroud keeping him apart.

He supposes that makes him feel like his family, too.

Reaching his destination - he’s just there to check, he reminds himself, nothing more - Derek scales the side of the house without much effort and lands quietly outside the window. It’s like he’s landed on another planet, the one he’s used to with vivid colors instead of everything being a muted grey, only it’s a shock in comparison. He breathes in sharply and takes a moment to try to adjust.

The fog still muffles everything behind him, but the light inside is bright, a warm yellow glow. There’s sound as well, not just the low hum of music coming from the phone’s speakers but the squeak of the springs of the chair, the tapping of a pencil against the desk, and the click-crack of ice cubes melting in the glass of water beside the whirring laptop. There’s scent, too, something familiar and dangerous that Derek never lets himself smell too deeply, not even tonight when his senses are starved.

Maybe especially not tonight, when all he can see and hear and smell is Stiles and only Stiles.

Stiles’ back is to the window, the nape of his neck bare and defenseless, pale skin over too-prominent tendon and bone. It would take Derek two seconds, less, to have his hands there. Or his teeth. Or his lips. It would take no time at all.

Just like Derek out in the fog, Stiles would never see it coming.

The song switches over, and Stiles’ pencil tapping goes from the sharp rhythm of boredom to following the beat of the music.

Stiles leans back in his chair, stretching his long arms over his head, and spins himself around as sings along. “ - really, really, really wanna zig-ah-zig- _Aah!_ ” He spots Derek, jerks in surprise in his seat, and flails his limbs out to keep his balance. Somehow he does, and he just barely manages not to knock over his water, too.

Derek long ago lost the habit of smiling, had it burned out of him like Peter’s sanity, but there’s something about Stiles that makes him think he could get used to doing it again. Just not tonight, not when he’s so on edge.

Stiles gets his feet under him and stalks over to the window, throwing open the sash. “Seriously, Derek. We have these things called doorbells. And telephones. And _stairs_. I’m sure this whole creature of the night thing gets you laid, but it’s really kind of creepy.”

Derek feels like the world is too bright and loud after his walk, but it’s almost comforting for it to be filled with Stiles, because even on normal day there are moments when he lets down his guard and Stiles is the brightest and loudest thing in his life. It’s a sharp contrast to the fog, but at least it’s familiar.

“It doesn’t,” Derek replies with a little more honesty than he might have intended, but he’s still not certain which way is up, only which way is _Stiles_.

Stiles steps back with a waved hand of welcome and flops back down in his chair as Derek climbs through the window. “Doesn’t what?”

Since Derek can’t call his earlier words back, he tries to make the best of the situation and says, “Get me laid.”

Stiles just rolls his eyes and swings his seat back and forth, all movement and sound. “Poor you, you have to rely on other things, like your manly muscles and manly scruff and kind of not at all manly beautiful eyes, and okay I’m going to shut up now. What’s up?”

Derek doesn’t know what to do with the fact that Stiles is attracted to him, something he’s been aware of for a while in the same way he notices people checking him out in the grocery store, but since he doesn’t know what it means and Stiles doesn’t seem to take it all that seriously, which makes sense because he’s a teenage boy with teenage boy hormones and sometimes gets similarly glassy-eyed when Erica walks by in a short skirt, Derek ignores it like he always does. 

For lack of a better option, he plants himself in front of the window, the world of fog behind him and the far more confusing world of Stiles’ room in front of him. “Nothing.”

“Nothing?” Stiles’ eyebrows go up. “No demons to track down, no weird wolfsbane to identify, no creepy wall of fog to research before it seeps into our lungs and transforms into its liquid state and drowns us all?”

“Uh.” Derek swings around to look out the window, then back at Stiles. He might not have the luxury to think about all of the horrible things that are out there because he’s so busy fighting what’s in front of him, but apparently Stiles doesn’t have that problem.

Stiles grimaces and waves his hands in apology or explanation. “I may have pulled an accidental all-nighter on Saturday watching really bad horror movies on basic cable.”

Like so often with Stiles, Derek really has no idea how to answer him, so he just says, “I think the fog is just normal fog.”

Stiles’ shoulders fall. “Well, that’s good,” he says and tilts his head to look at Derek. “So what are you doing here?”

Derek doesn’t have an answer to that question, either, really. Not one he feels is wise to share. “I was out walking - “

“In this?” Stiles interrupts, peering around him to look out the window.

“I like to walk. It clears my head.”

“Sweeps the cobwebs out,” Stiles says with a nod and settles against the back of his chair.

Derek freezes, shocked by the words and the not-quite-echo that resonates in his memory, and says, “What?”

“It sweeps the cobwebs out.” Stiles looks at him, his eyes wide and startled, and then shrugs a little, pretending it doesn’t matter when it’s clear from the look on his face that it matters quite a bit. “It’s, uh, it’s just something my mother used to say.”

“Mine did, too,” Derek admits.

They stare at each other for a moment, their eyes locked together. Stiles’ expression is frequently something of an open book, even if Derek doesn’t always feel competent to read it, but there’s a rawness to the bare melancholy in his eyes that Derek understands completely. He knows it is mirrored in his own, that same feeling of loss and bittersweet memory of someone he can never replace in his heart.

Derek can feel his grief thick in his throat, thick as the smoke and ash and guilt that choked him the awful day of the fire, but for once he can breathe through it, because he sees Stiles struggling with the same grief. For once, this loss isn’t something that sets him apart, or if it does - and how can it not, when so much of it is his fault? - it’s not so far apart, because other people understand, too, what it means. He’s not the only one.

Stiles is the first to break the silence, of course he is. “So, um, you were out for a walk in the pea souper out there and decided to stop by and check on me?”

Derek shrugs his uncomfortable agreement.

“It’s really freaking you out, isn’t it?” Stiles says, watching him. “The fog?”

“It’s just fog,” Derek tells him, though the answer is certainly yes.

Stiles chews his lip, then stands up and grabs a second shirt from his bed. He slides into it. “Show me.”

He leads Derek downstairs in a clatter of movement and sound that’s cut off as soon as they go through the back door into the dark yard. The air is clear for about ten feet, then fades into the same fuzzy greyness that Derek had experienced in the woods.

“Huh,” Stiles says. He takes a few steps away from the swath of light spilling out of the doorway and peers out into the darkness. He stands there quiet and still for a moment. “I guess it is a little creepy out here.”

“It feels wrong to me,” Derek says. He can hear Stiles breathing and the rapid patter of his heart, but the world around them gives him little else. It’s like they’re alone, not just in the yard but on the planet, with no cars, no animals, not even a confused moth trying to find its way into the house. “Not supernatural, just wrong.”

“Okay,” Stiles says slowly. “You’re sure we don’t need to be worrying about it?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Cool.” Stiles goes back to looking out at the yard.

Derek’s shoulders tighten in the growing silence between them. “I just can’t... I can’t see anything. I can’t hear anything. It’s wrong. It’s like what it must be like to be you. I feel helpless.”

He’s looking out at the yard, but in his peripheral vision he sees Stiles’ eyebrows climb. “Thanks?”

“It’s not a criticism of you,” Derek tells him. “You’re human. You’re helpless compared to me.”

Stiles doesn’t reply, just shrugs one of his shoulders.

“You are, and you still help.” It’s amazing, really. It requires so much courage, so much heart. “You still throw yourself in front of danger all of the time.”

“Not so much throw as trip and/or get tossed there,” Stiles says with another shrug.

Derek doesn’t let himself take a step toward him. “You know that’s not true. It would be easier for you not to help. Not to care. It would be smarter.”

Stiles’ head drops, and he says as he stares out into the fog. “Yeah, well.” His jaw tightens, and he draws in a shallow breath. “I can’t help it. Caring, I mean.”

“I know,” Derek says. Stiles is all about caring, all heart. It’s not that he’s stupid about it, but he’s there helping because he wants to be, not because he needs to be. It’s not out of guilt or the fact of a bite; it’s out of his heart.

Still, there’s more than a hint of self-consciousness in Stiles’ voice, like Stiles isn’t sure if Derek is judging him for it. Derek isn’t. He admires it, really. Stiles has a choice when Derek does not, because he was born to the life. He doesn’t have to be there; Derek does.

What Derek wasn’t born to was how he’s grown to feel about it - not for the first time but again, not time but people healing the deep wounds of his heart and making him feel and want in a way he didn’t think he’d ever allow himself again and still isn’t sure is wise - and he finds himself adding, “Neither can I.”

“I know,” Stiles says.

“You do?” Derek asks, frowning at him.

“Sure.” Stiles shrugs and glances over, rocking back on his heels. “I mean, you’re always getting between people and danger, always lurking around. You even swung by on a night full of heavy if not actually supernatural fog just to check up on me.”

“I didn’t - “ Derek starts, but the look Stiles levels at him stops the rest of the sentence from coming out. Stiles isn’t sure of himself, Derek can see that in the way his mouth twists, but Stiles sees something. He knows something. He understands something more the same way he always does.

“Really?” Stiles watches him.

“I - “ Derek doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know what to do. He likes Stiles. He cares about him. He’s amazed by him, by all that he can do, by all that he is, by how he can stand out here in this fog-covered yard and still be the brightest thing in Derek’s world. “I shouldn’t have come. You’re fine.”

Stiles nods, some light in his eyes going out, but he doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t sag. He doesn’t look like he expected anything different. “I am. Go do the rest of your rounds and head home, Derek.”

Derek knows he should do that. He knows he should walk away. But he also knows if he walks ten yards into the night when he turns around he’s only going to see the glow from the windows and the fuzzy outline of Stiles’ shadow in the doorway, and it feels too much like seeing a ghost, like the dreams that wake him in the night of his mother waving him out to play from the kitchen door.

Derek knows that he should walk away and let that happen, because the idea of Stiles being his is as foolish to hold onto as a dream. Stiles needs to grow up and leave, because he can. Because his life is worth something, and he can live it. Stiles has a choice. He needs to take it. Derek knows that.

But now, in this night where Derek is as helpless as Stiles, where for once their senses are almost equal, where for once Derek can forget about all that he is and has to be because he _can’t_ be it... tonight it’s almost too much to have to say no to something he so badly wants to have. He can do it, but it’s almost impossible.

“Caring hurts,” Stiles says softly, gently. His expression is filled with understanding, though Derek’s not sure for what. He’s afraid to ask.

Derek nods.

“It always does,” Stiles says. “Me, I love my dad so much it guts me to think about it sometimes, because I know someday he’s not going to be there anymore. His job, this crazy town, a drunk driver, a blood clot. Someday he’s just not going to be there at all. I hope not for a long, long time, but... yeah.” He takes a slow breath. “It’s hard. Some people say it’s a risk to love, but it isn’t, really. It just happens. I mean, you can’t stop yourself from caring, can you? I can’t, anyway.”

Derek nods again. He wishes he didn’t care about anyone, about his family, about Scott, about Isaac, about Stiles... It would be so much easier if he didn’t. But no matter what he does, no matter how he tries to guard his heart, no matter how much it _hurts_ , no matter how much harder it makes everything in his life, he can’t stop caring. He can’t stop wanting. He wishes he could.

“But,” Stiles says after a little pause, like he almost doesn’t say it at all, “my mother always said you have to love people while they’re here. No matter for how long that is.”

Derek thinks of his mother, his father, his siblings, his cousins, and knows he never showed them enough of his love. It doesn’t matter that he was a kid. It doesn’t matter. They’re still gone, and they still didn’t know. He can never tell them. There’s nothing he can ever do to show them.

“Your mother sounds very smart,” he says. “Like you.”

Stiles’ tongue darts out to moisten his lower lip, and his heartbeat skitters in his chest, loud in the night. He steps closer, his fingertips coming up to land lightly, like the touch of a butterfly, on Derek’s chest. “She was.”

He squares his jaw, watches Derek’s eyes, and leans in for a kiss. It’s soft and over almost before it begins, but Stiles doesn’t duck away. He doesn’t flinch. There’s an edge of uncertainty to the set of his shoulders and the bend of his neck, but he just stands there and waits.

“Stiles...” Derek’s next inhalation is shaky, because Stiles just _kissed_ him, and he really, really doesn’t know how to guard himself against that, either. He doesn’t know how to stop himself from wanting it. And he _wants_ it, wants him, wants every bit of light and courage in him, every bit of his generous heart. He wants to feel it all directed on him.

And Stiles just _kissed him_.

His heart pounds in his chest, and he wonders if it’s loud enough for Stiles to hear. It’s been so long since he’s had what he wants, so long since he’s had even the promise of it. He knows he should be saying something or doing something, taking charge, but all he can do is stand there in desperate wonder.

Stiles’ head tilts, and the corner of his mouth lifts into a smile. He must like whatever he sees in Derek’s face, though Derek has no idea what that could be. “Still think I’m smart?” he asks a little smugly.

Derek huffs out a laugh of agreement, and Stiles’ eyes brighten with delight.

“Okay, then,” Stiles says. He fits his hand around Derek’s, the touch almost more intimate than the kiss.

“I think you’re brave, too,” Derek says before he can stop himself. The mist surrounding them makes the yard feel safe and protected, a place where secrets have to be told. “And strong.” He pulls on Stiles’ hand, drawing him in against him, and Stiles comes so willingly, so sure, that Derek’s gratitude for it feels stuck in his throat. Stiles might be physically more fragile because he’s human, but he knows his own mind and his own heart. “And caring.”

“And completely irresistible?” Stiles asks in a slightly wavering voice, his heartbeat racing even faster.

Derek has to smile, and just before he gets his mouth back on Stiles’, says, “And let’s not forget modest.”

Stiles is laughing as their lips meet, his breath soft on Derek’s face, and the sound turns into a moan as he wraps his arms around Derek’s neck. It goes straight into Derek’s blood before it drifts off to get lost in the air.

There’s nothing but them in Derek’s ears, his nose, nothing that matters at all. He only has to be focused on Stiles, on kissing him, on having him in his arms. And Stiles is right there with him, his mouth eager, his body swaying into him, his hands tentative but increasingly firm on Derek’s back and arms.

It’s so good, like liquid fire between them, catching them both in its heat and melting the rough edges of learning each other - new tastes and sounds, new places to touch, spots that are ticklish, angles that don’t quite work - with the pure pleasure of getting to try. And they’re both quick learners. They’ve had to be.

“So smart,” Stiles mutters happily some time later, his fingers tangled in Derek’s hair and his lips still smiling when Derek tries to kiss him quiet once more. Stiles hums his amusement and pleasure, and Derek rolls his closed eyes. He’ll have to settle for muffled, because quiet is clearly beyond Stiles.

That’s good, too. There’s too much lonely silence, too much solitude in Derek’s life, even when he’s able to hear all of the world’s sounds.

The hair lifts on Derek’s arms with a faint breeze, bringing with it the scents of damp vegetation and car exhaust, and he knows idly that it means the front is coming through. The weather will change. The fog will clear. The world will open up around them once more, bringing back dangers and stresses, all of reality.

Derek pulls Stiles closer with a hand on his waist and deepens the kiss while he can. Stiles makes a soft noise of need and goes along with it. They’re still wrapped up in the fog’s hushed, protective embrace, cut off from the world, surrounded by memory and silence and each other. No one can see them, no one can hear them. For now, for this moment, it’s just the two of them together. Derek isn’t going to waste it.

He’ll worry about the rest tomorrow, when everything goes back to normal. And he knows it’s going to come crashing in again and make his life hard and painful, because it always does.

But, he thinks as he flattens his hands on the lean muscles of Stiles’ back, it just might be a little better now.

Or a lot better.

Or depressingly the same, only Derek will have one more precious thing to lose.

But that’s all for tomorrow to show. Tonight... tonight, for once, is only for them.

So Derek kisses his way toward Stiles’ ear and murmurs, “Smart _and_ completely irresistible,” just to hear Stiles laugh again.

And Stiles does, his eyes crinkling as he grins brightly at him. “I knew it,” he says.

“I did, too,” Derek agrees, his hands fisting in the back of Stiles’ shirts and his own laughter flaring out like sparks into the grey world around them as Stiles chuckles and pushes in close once more.


End file.
